If such judicial supremacy prevails, the courts can "establish systems of policy by judicial decision." What is this but despotism? "I see no difference, whether you take this power from the people and give it to your judges, who are in office for life, or grant it to a King for life."[1047]
The time is overripe, asserts Johnson, to check judicial usurpation—already the National Judiciary has struck down laws of eight States.[1048] The career of this judicial oligarchy must be ended. "The security of our liberties demands it." Let the jurisdiction of National courts be specifically limited; or let National judges be subject to removal upon address of both Houses of Congress; or let their commissions be vacated "after a limited term of service"; or, finally, "vest a controlling power in the Senate ... or some other body who shall be responsible to the elective franchise."[1049]
The Kentucky Legislature backed its fearless Senator;[1050] but the Virginia Assembly weakened at the end. Most of the Kentucky land titles, which the Supreme Court's decision had protected as against the "occupying claimants," were, of course, held by Virginians or their assignees. Virginia conservatives, too, were beginning to realize the wisdom of Marshall's Nationalist policy as it affected all their interests, except slavery and tariff taxation; and these men were becoming hesitant about further attacks on the Supreme Court. Doubtless, also, Marshall's friends were active among the members of the Legislature. Roane understood the situation when he begged friends to "jog up" the apathetic, and bemoaned the quiescence of Jefferson and Madison. His proposed amendments were lost, though by a very close vote.[1051]
Nevertheless, the Virginia Localists carried the fight to the floors of Congress. On April 26, 1822, Andrew Stevenson, one of Roane's lieutenants and now a member of the National House, demanded the repeal of Section 25 of the Ellsworth Judiciary Act which gave the Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction over the State courts. But Stevenson was unwontedly mild. He offered his resolution "in a spirit of peace and forbearance.... It was ... due to those States, in which the subject has been lately so much agitated, as well as to the nation, to have it ... decided."[1052]
As soon as Congress convened in the winter of 1823, Senator Johnson renewed the combat; but he had become feeble, even apologetic. He did not mean to reflect "upon the conduct of the judges, for he believed them to be highly enlightened and intelligent." Nevertheless, their life tenure and irresponsibility required that some limit should be fixed to their powers. So he proposed that the membership of the Supreme Court be increased to ten, and that at least seven Justices should concur in any opinion involving the validity of National or State laws.[1053]
Four months later, Senator Martin Van Buren reported from the Judiciary Committee, a bill "that no law of any of the States shall be rendered invalid, without the concurrence of at least five Judges of the Supreme Court; their opinions to be separately expressed."[1054] But the friends of the Judiciary easily overcame the innovators; the bill was laid on the table;[1055] and for that session the assault on the Supreme Court was checked. At the next session, however, Kentucky again brought the matter before Congress. Charles A. Wickliffe, a Representative from that State, proposed that writs of error from the Supreme Court be "awarded to either party," regardless of the decision of the Supreme Court of any State.[1056] Webster, on the Judiciary Committee, killed Wickliffe's resolution with hardly a wave of his hand.[1057]
After a reargument of Green vs. Biddle, lasting an entire week,[1058] the Supreme Court stood to its guns and again held the Kentucky land laws unconstitutional. Yet so grave was the crisis that the decision was not handed down for a whole year. This time the opinion of the court was delivered on February 27, 1823, by Bushrod Washington, who held that the contract clause of the National Constitution was violated, but plainly considered that "the principles of law and reason"[1059] were of more importance in this case than the Constitutional provision. Washington's opinion displays the alarm of the Supreme Court at the assaults upon it: "We hold ourselves answerable to God, our consciences and our country, to decide this question according to the dictates of our best judgment, be the consequences of the decision what they may."[1060]
Kentucky promptly replied. In his Message to the Legislature, Governor John Adair declared that the Kentucky decisions of the Supreme Court struck at "the right of the people to govern themselves." The National authority can undoubtedly employ force to "put down insurrection," but "that ... day, when the government shall be compelled to resort to the bayonet to compel a state to submit to its laws, will not long precede an event of all others to be deprecated."[1061]
One of Marshall's numerous Kentucky kinsmen, who was an active member of the Legislature, stoutly protested against any attack on the Supreme Court; nevertheless he offered a resolution reciting the grievances of the State and proposing an address "to the supreme court of the United States, in full session," against the decision and praying for "its total and definitive reversal."[1062] What! exclaimed John Rowan, another member of the Legislature, shall Kentucky again petition "like a degraded province of Rome"?[1063] He proposed counter-resolutions that the Legislature "do ... most solemnly PROTEST ... against the erroneous, injurious, and degrading doctrines of the opinion ... in ... Green and Biddle."[1064] When modified, Rowan's resolutions, one of which hinted at forcible resistance to the mandate of the Supreme Court, passed by heavy majorities.[1065] Later resolutions openly threatened to "call forth the physical power of the state, to resist the execution of the decisions of the court," which were "considered erroneous and unconstitutional."[1066]
In the same year that the Supreme Court decided the Kentucky land case, Justice Johnson aroused South Carolina by a decision rendered in the United States District Court of that State. One Henry Elkison, a negro sailor and a British subject, was taken by the sheriff of the Charleston district, from the British ship Homer; and imprisoned under a South Carolina law which directed the arrest and confinement of any free negro on board any ship entering the ports of that State, the negro to be released only when the vessel departed.[1067] Johnson wrathfully declared that the "unconstitutionality of the law ... will not bear argument"—nobody denied that it could not be executed "without clashing with the general powers of the United States, to regulate commerce." Thereupon, one of the counsel for the State said that the statute must and would be enforced; and "that if a dissolution [sic] of the union must be the alternative he was ready to meet it"—an assertion which angered Johnson who delivered an opinion almost as strong in its Nationalism as those of Marshall.[1068]